


the shape of your pain

by theflyjar



Series: landmarks for my errors in your scars [2]
Category: C-Pop, EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Ancient China, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Guilt, Historical, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, M/M, Reconciliation, Royalty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-13 08:22:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18937099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theflyjar/pseuds/theflyjar
Summary: It’s this that Yixing had been waiting to see. If only just to know if it would help to bring him closure.Back then, maybe it would have.Now, it fuels an anger inside him





	the shape of your pain

**Author's Note:**

> this is the first time i've ever written a sequel to a fic, i think... so be sure to check out _the dragon's dagger_ before this

“She is a good fit,” Yifan attempts to reason once more, fingers skimming up Yixing’s stomach. “She is orderly, intelligent, and cultivated, a true beauty from the myths of the kingdom.”

“It is not her I wish to have as my wife, as my Empress.” Yixing knows his tone creeps toward petulance but he simply cannot help it. He has not actively avoided marriage, but now the pressure to be wed is mounting, Yixing finds himself reluctant. “I do not want to be bound up outside of love.”

“This is not about love, Emperor, this is about the Zhang dynasty and the lineage of this kingdom.”

The tense ground this subject dances on has Yifan hesitating in the way he touches Yixing, even if they are both smeared with oils and perspiration from love-making. Yifan is attempting to atone, to restore the Zhang dynasty to its full power. It chokes guilt tightly around Yixing’s throat, for laying with the murderer of his family. They have not rekindled their intimacy for long, only coupling a handful of times before Yixing invites Yifan to remain, to sleep beside the emperor and kiss him awake once the sun peeks over the hills that circle the city. The shame claws him up inside, but he cannot resist Yifan. He cannot resist how intoxicating love is and how poisoned by Yifan’s love his heart is to disobey his head.

It’s his affection that slips out a whisper of, “Why can’t we simply marry?” into the emperor’s bedchamber.

“No matter how many times I am bedded, I cannot bear your blessed children, nor can you yourself. Emperor, I am merely your humble servant, a slave to your love, not a husband.” Yifan’s words are not untrue, but they prickle hatred in the back of Yixing’s skull. Yifan is a brilliant commander, someone who can and would wield the weight of Yixing’s name like a sword. As long as he’s faithful to the throne.

“This house requires a strong helm whilst I rule the country.” It’s no coincidence that Yixing feels up Yifan’s body then, scratching slightly at the sun-honeyed skin that’s notched with a handful of scarred battle wounds. Yifan’s prowess in the leading of any collective of people is unmatched, to Yixing, and he could easily run a household on Yixing’s behalf. Even if the trust does not run like an impenetrable diamond thread between them anymore, Yixing would hope that Yifan’s mother would be more than capable of keeping her son in line.

“This house also requires children, and the Zhu girl is your best-primed candidate to do both those things. You need support from powerful families of the north, marrying her and mixing your bloodlines to produce an heir can forge that for you. The benefits she brings to your throne far outweigh anything I could ever offer. You  _ must _ consider her.”

“And what of you, and your bloodline?” Yixing hates the way the words catch on bitterness in his throat, it shouldn’t. Not for the man who has destroyed so much of his life. “Will you take a spouse?”

Yifan stares at Yixing, eyes so dark that Yixing wishes to light a lamp to see the colours refract from Yifan’s irises. Yet, Yixing can clearly see the look of unyielding obedience in there, and whilst it has most probably always been there, it strikes him now that he truly has that power over Yifan. Over most – if not  _ all  _ – of his people, too. If he prohibits it, it is punishable. If he propounds it, it must be done.

Yixing pauses and ponders for a moment, skimming his fingers up Yifan’s body, throat, and jaw to rest at his cheek. Yifan’s eyes fall then, his head tilting downwards.

“Would you like to marry? Is it something you want?”

The silence in the room shifts to something different, drifting back towards tenseness and Yixing raises himself up from where he is pressed against Yifan’s body. Yifan sits up, too, but keeps his head bowed.

“Is there something you wish to say?” Yixing poses the question, edging towards Yifan again.

“It is more that I would rather not say.” Yifan’s admittance catches Yixing off-guard but he does not halt the motions to run his fingers through Yifan’s hair, to move the tresses from where they cover his face.

“In these walls, you do not have to hide your true self. I know both the darkness and the light that resides inside you, Yifan; I have seen both the depths and the shallows. You needn’t keep yourself hidden.”

Yifan’s eyes peer up, glittering with a crystal band of tears along his lower lashes, and he confesses: “My line does not deserve to continue for what it has done to yours. The blood in my veins should not drown out the blood on my hands.”

It’s blunt. There’s no skirting around the topic, but the guilt is there. The expression and posture Yixing had searched for that morning his family had been slaughtered is embodied in the way Yifan slumps forward where he’s sat. It’s this that Yixing had been waiting to see. If only just to know if it would help to bring him closure.

Back then, maybe it would have.

Now, it fuels an anger inside him. One that has him rising from his bed and fumbling for a thin silk robe to wrap his body up in. It covers him up from being bare, pulling up a divide between his body and the cool, night air, and to shield himself away from where Yifan moves, standing and reaching for his own clothes. The shift want instantaneous, as if those words triggered Yixing into motion, into venting everything out in that moment, rather than to remain diplomatic.

“Then why did you do it? They loved you, why did you kill them?”

Yifan looks over his shoulder for a moment, layering his robes up and hiding his dagger in the folds of the fabrics near his chest. The way the clothes shroud him, it’s impossible to tell that there’s a blade there at all, and the concealment feels symbolic. Though, Yixing simply cannot tell if it is Yifan defending his own heart or weaponising it.

“He was going to slaughter you all.” Yifan’s stare makes Yixing squirm but he does not back down, he keeps his chin high and reminds himself to stand with the poise of an emperor. “I took what power I had and used it to protect you, not because I knew you would want to live, but because  _ I,  _ selfishly, did not want you to die.”

“You didn’t have to obey him! He may have been your father, but you had power behind you, you had  _ me  _ to give you the influence you needed to defy him.”

“And what use is that influence when you’re dead,  _ Emperor?  _ He would have killed me, you, and your family if I didn’t obey him. And what use would that have been? If we were all dead? Would you have liked to be tortured by him? Would you have preferred if your family were pulled limb from limb by the defectors? I did what I could to protect you and to let your family die with some kind of dignity. I kept them from feeling the pain he craved to give them.”

“You still killed them! Your actions were traitorous. You should have denied his commands.”

“I took no dukedom of my own, Emperor. I had no power, I  _ still _ have no power. I relinquished my title to be a soldier…  _ A soldier… _ For you. All because  _ you  _ asked me to. I became your servant, your slave, instead of a member of your court. We never would have been equals but I rid myself of the titles I did have, just to stay with you.” Yifan doesn’t move from where he glances over his shoulder. “I had no power to refuse him, as a son who shamed his father by becoming the slave of a prince, and as the one who was bound to protect your love.

“I did not want to kill them, but I could not bear the idea of you dying or him taking to the throne, a throne I myself did not wish to have. I begged at his feet to spare you and I wept as I confessed my actions to your father. Even in the face of betrayal and death, your mother told me that you would forgive me one day, for being their merciful executioner. She called me her angel of death because she knew she would feel no pain with me as her slaughterer. I live with the guilt of their deaths and the burdens of their forgiveness each and every day. I live with knowing you shall never love me once more. And I live with knowing that this is what I deserve. I know the shape of your pain because I forged it with my own hands.”

_ “Emperor!”  _ A servant’s voice rings through the chamber, followed by a huddle of soldiers. “We heard your shouts, are you okay?”

Whilst Yixing motions to placate them, Yifan takes his leave. He wanders out, knowing Yixing will be too preoccupied with telling his worried servants that he is perfectly fine. Yixing wishes to chase Yifan down, to finish their exchange, but he ignores the want and returns to his bed.

It is still warm and slightly indented where Yifan had laid, so Yixing curls up in it, trying to ignore the fretting staff, to sleep.

◈◈◈

 

It’s gentle fingertips running through his hair that stir him awake, smoothing strands of his tresses and scratching lightly on his scalp. They don’t stop as he moves, widening his mouth in a yawn and stretching out like a cat atop his bed. 

“You fought, didn’t you, hmm?” Yifan’s mother doesn’t coo her words, but she softens them enough that Yixing knows she is not there to scold him. 

Yixing nods, motioning tiredly, but still nestling back into his pillow.

“Your pain will always be in your heart and Yifan does not expect forgiveness for that. This is not merely a petty lover’s quarrel driven by spite or jealousy. This is  _ hurt  _ to the highest degree, something that skews your heart and your head because this is something so incomprehensible that even years later, you still have no resolution But that is because you wish for either your heart or your head to take the lead, when they are two entities that bind into a system. You attempt to control what is governed by the heart with your mind, and you attempt to feel what is distant to your mind in your heart.” The more she speaks, the more Yixing’s eyes open and he fixes his gaze on the door that leads out to his chamber’s private gardens. “No one expects the person they love to be capable of destroying so much. But, we must remember that, often, destruction leads to a new path, one that isn’t expected but is often needed. And neither our hearts nor our minds can fully cognise this.”

“Are you saying my family  _ needed  _ to die?” Anger bites within Yixing, but he is drawn away from it by the gentle, denying hums from Yifan’s mother.

“For the Zhang dynasty to live on, yes.” She stands from where she rests beside Yixing on the bed, to circle round it to crouch in front of him and look into his eyes as she speaks. “The malevolence in my husband’s mind was beyond what you could comprehend. In all the years I knew him and was married to him, he only did one good thing, and that was give me Yifan.

“I knew, from the first moment I held Yifan in my arms, that I would not allow him to corrupt my son. And then, you were born, barely a year later, and I felt the same for you. I loved your brothers and sisters, but I love you as if you are my own son, and I knew I would do anything to keep you from harm, to keep you from the man I knew my husband to be. Each and every person in this palace, from your father to the lowliest of servants, thought my husband to be loyal, trustworthy, and dedicated to the Zhang throne. No one, not even you, could see him with the eyes that I could. That Yifan could.”

“Why didn’t either of you do something? Or tell anyone?” 

“Do you think people would have believed us? My husband was raised to honour the Zhang dynasty, just like how I raised Yifan, and there was no reason to believe he would stray — until he did. He was the fiercest defender of your father in the eyes of this kingdom, but to me, he was the man who terrorised my life and harmed my son. He spat so much hatred into our family that I feared it would infect Yifan. But I kept the two of you together, hoping that whatever bond you forged would be a fortress for him, away from the violent words and hands of his father.

“I feared for so many years until one spring, just as the last of the ice was melting between the trees, I saw the way Yifan looked at you. There was not a single ounce of hatred, greed, or jealousy there. He stared at you as if you were light itself and I knew nothing my husband ever said could corrupt that, not when you looked at him in the same way.”

Tears build up in Yixing’s eyes whilst she speaks, both imagining the lives they had that he was blind to, but also how fresh the wound of loss still is inside him — not only for his family, but the purity of his love. “But he still betrayed me and my family. The  _ suffering _ he has caused…”

“…Is far less than what would have been, if things had unfolded otherwise.” Her interjection does not offend Yixing. She speaks to him as if he is her son and Yixing’s arms ache to hold her, to mourn the loss of his own mother like a crumbling son would. And, as if she can sense it from him, she takes his hand into hers. “Tragedy was always going to be the outcome of this. And Yifan, my lovely little boy, had his hand forced.  _ But,  _ he did tell your father. Before anything happened, before that night, he told your father and risked  _ everything  _ — you, me, himself, your family — to let your father know what was going to happen. I was furious with him because he was beyond reckless in doing so, but he did it because he knew that if he simply let things happen how my husband wanted, they would not have ended like this. It was your father’s last decree, for Yifan to protect the Zhang throne and restore it to splendour without the rotten fruit of his father.”

“But he did not have to do what he did, why can’t anyone else see this?”

“Because you have looked upon this with the influence of a prince and, now, an emperor. Your power to be unyielding and to defy is beyond what most of us could comprehend and, likewise, you do not fully realise how powerless the mandate of the throne can leave everyone else. Would you expect Yifan to keep to your command if you ordered him to kill you?”

“Of course.”

“Then do you understand his duty to your father’s, and mother’s, words? If it was commanded upon him to kill them in order to save you, to save their gentlest, most erudite, and yet unwavering son, do you think he would have followed that command? Even if you disregard the way he feels about you and merely think of how obedient he has always been to this throne, do you think he would have followed that command?”

Yixing doesn’t answer, he doesn’t have to, they both know Yifan would. He does not follow blindly, but he has always acted with the utmost loyalty. If Yixing were to tell him to raise a village, one teeming with life, to the ground for the greater good, he would do so. 

“For Yifan, saving the Zhang dynasty and saving you are interlinked. He would rebel against any order that would betray his vow to protect you, and, equally, he would follow any order — no matter how harrowing and brutal — to keep you safe.” Yifan’s mother pauses for a second, using her thumbs to caress away tears that slip out of Yixing’s eyes. “Yifan would risk you never loving him again, he would risk you sentencing him to death for treason, rather than let you be harmed by any single thing.”

They remain like that, with silent tears slipping across Yixing’s skin until they’re caught by Yifan’s mother. He’s close to drifting back to sleep, drenched in motherly adoration, until she nudges him ever so lightly.

“Come on, let’s get up and have some breakfast. You’ve had a long night and the palace will be starting to wake by now, and they shall need you bless them with your acumen — before the nation falls apart at the hands of those god-awful ministers.” She stands up and holds her hands out to him, to pull him upright, and Yixing is reminded of his childhood when she would wake both him and Yifan life this. He grins at her and the smile he gets in return is small but so brimmed with love that all it makes him think of is Yifan. She stops walking when she gets close to the door and turns to him, saying: “Remember, little love, you should rule your kingdom with that head of yours, but still, you  _ must _ let your heart rule your love.”

 

◈◈◈

 

Yixing slips quietly into the armoury, his servants left behind at the door, and the soldiers inside all bow, heads and knees pressed to the floor, before taking their leave Only Yifan and Yixing remain, and even then Yifan doesn’t spare him a glance. It doesn’t seem to be anger or frustration, because Yixing can see the way Yifan forces himself to keep steady as he approaches.

“I have sent my marriage offer to the Zhu family.” Yixing comes to a stop beside Yifan, where he is sharpening the blade of his sword.

“So I’ve heard,” Yifan hums and Yixing wraps his hand around the sword’s blade. 

“They have accepted it.” Yixing does not miss the way Yifan falters and finally lifts his head to meet his gaze. “We will marry before the summer and the kingdom shall have its empress.”

“And your people shall rejoice in this.” There is no smile, no relief there, simply Yifan staring back to him. Yixing’s fingers grip harder to the blade placed upon the table, and Yifan’s eyes flick down to where his knuckles white. “Be careful not to cut yourself.”

Yixing ignores him and clears his throat.

“As an emperor, you marry your wife for them to become your Empress, to coordinate and oversee your household.” Yixing releases the blade and runs his fingers up the side of it, over the hilt, until it coasts up Yifan’s hand and arm until he can cup Yifan’s cheek in his palm. “But, an emperor takes a consort for love, and there is no one left in this world that I could possibly love more than you. If I cannot make you my husband in the way a commoner would, I wish to selfishly have you as my own.”

“I have been your consort from the very moment your lips met mine for the first time. I may only be a slave and a soldier to the eyes of the court, but I have always been your consort.”

“Then I shall make sure each person in this court and this nation knows it.”

**Author's Note:**

> find me on _[curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/yifan)_ and _[twitter](https://twitter.com/yifantares)_ , if you'd like!


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